tural as it was that the highest
building of the town should become visible to him before the others,
the tender meaning with which his fancy imbued the fact made him
forget that it was so. The slate roof of the church and steeple needed
repairs. This work had been given to his father; and it was the
reason, or at least the pretext, for his father's calling him back
home sooner than he had intended. Perhaps tomorrow he would begin his
part of the work. There, above the wide arch through which he saw the
bells moving, the steeple door had been placed. There the two beams
would have to be pushed out to bear the ladder on which he should
climb up to the broach-post to fasten to it the rope of the
contrivance in which he would make his airy circuit of the roof. And
as it was his nature to bind the cords of his heart to the objects
with which his work brought him in touch, he saw a greeting in the
sudden appearance of the spire and involuntarily reached out toward it
as if he would press a hand offered him in friendship. Then the
thought of the work quickened his step, till a clearing in the wood
and his arrival on the highest slope of the mountain showed him his
whole home town lying at his feet.

Again he stopped. There stood his father's house with the slate shed
behind it, not far from it the house where she had lived at the time
he went away. Now she lived in his father's house, was his father's
daughter, his brother's wife; and from now on he was to live in the
same house with her and to see her daily as his sister-in-law. His
heart beat harder at the thought of her. But it did not allow any of
the hopes which had formerly been bound up with her memory to rise.
His affection had become that of a brother for a sister, and what
moved him now was more like anxiety. He knew that she thought of him
with dislike. She was the only one in his father's whole house who
looked forward to his coming with displeasure. How had this all come
about? Had there not been a time when she seemed to be fond of him,
when she had apparently liked to meet him as much as she later avoided
him? Down below there, in front of the town, the shooting-house stood
surrounded by gardens. How much bigger the trees round the house had
grown since he had waved his last greeting to it from this height!
Shortly before he had stood there under that acacia--it had been a
beautiful spring evening, the most beautiful he thought he had ever
known--at the Whitsu